The Politician (37 page)

When we did actually speak, the senator talked anxiously about the scandal-related press calls coming into the campaign but also kept telling me how grateful he was for my help. He went out of his way to make me feel important, as if I were saving him and therefore the country from a catastrophe. He said he was worried about calls the campaign had had from a reporter for
The New York Times
who said he had evidence that I had undergone a vasectomy after our last child was born with heart problems. He claimed that Rielle’s child couldn’t be mine. This wasn’t true, of course. I hadn’t had a vasectomy

In this conversation, the senator told me his wife was now calling supporters and saying derogatory things about me but that he would try to get her to stop. He acted as if we were partners now more than ever, and he reinforced this connection by sharing inside information. When Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Pakistan, he told me about how Pervez Musharraf had called him directly to consult. Strangely, he made these observations on world and national affairs with less urgency than he brought to his comments about keeping Rielle happy and quiet. He was careful, though, to avoid using her actual name. Typical was this message:

I’m in Nashua, New Hampshire, about to get on a plane to go to Iowa . . . I’m sorry I couldn’t reach you, but we’re just, you know, I’ve got four CBS reporters on the plane with me so I’m standing out in eighteen degree temperatures to call you. And please tell her I said hello and I will call later tonight. Thanks.

Rielle required the senator’s constant attention, because now that she was playing “fugitive on an expense account,” she was even more demanding and, at times, less careful. Although her picture was displayed on the front page of the
National Enquirer,
which was on the rack in the lobby newsstand, she traipsed around the resort as if she owned the place. With
Rielle indulging in this risky behavior, and Cheri and me anxious to reunite with our kids for the holiday, Fred Baron arranged for us to get out of Florida on Christmas Eve aboard another private jet. At checkout, I noticed that we had racked up a bill totaling more than eight thousand dollars in seven nights. The clerk also gave me a FedEx envelope from Fred. It held one thousand dollars’ cash and a note that said, “Old Chinese proverb: Use cash, not credit cards.”

The plan called for us to travel to southern Illinois to pick up the kids and then to Aspen, Colorado, where we would stay in Fred Baron’s vacation home. Aspen was going to be our temporary haven until we found a place where we could live together in seclusion until Rielle gave birth. The only hitch in the plan, other than the fact that we were giving up our normal lives, involved a friend—a trial lawyer from Georgia—whom Fred had invited to use the house from December 27 to January 2. During this time, we would have to hide ourselves at a hotel in San Diego which Rielle chose. Complicated as these arrangements may sound, I was used to juggling campaign travel for the senator, who might take half a dozen flights in a single day, so this itinerary seemed easy to me.

As we left Florida, we phoned Cheri’s dad to ask him to bring the kids to the MidAmerica Airport, a little-used facility outside St. Louis where we would be unlikely to attract any attention. We asked him to come alone, because her mom wasn’t too crazy about me. (She had good reason to feel this way.) To his credit, he didn’t say anything even after he saw Rielle and her swollen belly and realized she was with us. Like everyone in my family, Cheri’s folks were aware of what was on the front page of the
Enquirer
and must have guessed what was going on, but her dad said nothing as he said good-bye to his grandchildren and they climbed aboard a private jet for some mysterious adventure.

Because we knew the kids would miss their regular Christmas celebration, Cheri and I had bought a tiny artificial tree with lights and installed it inside the plane, so as they climbed aboard it looked as if they were getting a ride on Santa’s private jet. We had never been separated from all three of
them for so long, and they hugged us as though we had been lost in the jungle for a year. Rielle, whom they called “Jaya,” did her best to smile and be friendly during the flight, although she must have felt like an outsider at a family picnic. The kids ate candy, visited the pilots in the cockpit (where they helped “fly” the jet), and screamed with roller-coaster delight when we landed and the plane wobbled from side to side as the crew applied the brakes to bring us to a halt on the icy runway.

At the FBO, which is a stone-and-timber building that looks like a ski chalet, the crew shut down the engines, opened the door, and lowered the steps. The kids ran outside and immediately grabbed some of the fresh snow to throw at one another. Two SUVs waited for us, and the driver of the one that carried our family narrated the journey through a development started by the singer John Denver: “That hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar house belongs to Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States; this one belongs to Robert Wagner, the actor. . . .” When we drove up Fred Baron’s driveway, we discovered a stone-and-wood mansion secluded by evergreens and staffed by a house manager, a chef, and a masseuse, who were all on call.

Fred’s sprawling house was lavishly furnished. Pictures of his frequent guests Bill and Hillary Clinton were placed in conspicuous places, and the coffeepot in the kitchen was, we were told, the property of Lance Armstrong, who had lived in the place during training. I was impressed by the home gym, which was filled with equipment. The kids loved the racquet-ball court, which they called “the ballroom,” and the indoor pool/Jacuzzi/sauna complex, which was enclosed by a ceiling painted to look like the night sky, with twinkling lights to represent the stars.

Within an hour of our arrival, the kids were splashing and floating in the pool as Cheri, Rielle, and I watched them. For a moment, we forgot the craziness that had brought us to the place and allowed ourselves to enjoy it. Rielle got so relaxed that she again started talking about her sexual escapades with the senator, including specifics about where, when, and how they performed certain acts. We interrupted her with cries of, “Whoa!
TMI!”—too much information—and she retreated from this subject. But the details about their affair would come up again and again in our time on the road.

After Cheri and I put the kids to bed and the quiet overcame us, we remembered that it was Christmas Eve and we were far from friends and family and unable to give our kids the holiday they usually enjoyed. On Christmas Day, we managed a small celebration with a tree Fred had arranged and the few presents we had brought from home. Cheri and I called our families and had some awkward conversations, and we had fun playing in the snow with the kids. Rielle was unhappy to be out of contact with the senator over the holiday and impatient to move on to California, where she hoped that Fred Baron would set us up in a house in either San Diego or Santa Barbara. The latter was her first choice because it was the home of her spiritual adviser—a guy called Bob—who was her most important source of “spiritual” support.

Anyone who spent any time around Rielle knew that Bob McGovern was the source of wisdom who guided many of her decisions. She called him “an intuitive,” which in her world meant that he possessed a sort of sixth sense that he could use to acquire special insight into any situation and to predict the future by reading the stars. Although I had never met him, I heard Rielle consult him on the phone many dozens of times. Often she would just leave a message describing her problem and requesting he intervene. A little while later, she would say she could “feel” the changes Bob was “creating” in the spirit realm. Because we paid her bills, I learned that Bob charged for his cell phone consultations—two hundred dollars was typical—and that Rielle relied on him for help with everything from the profound to the ridiculous.

The ridiculous was on display in Aspen on the one occasion when we all went out to eat together. With the kids in mind, we picked a burger-and-shakes place called Boogie’s Diner. With 1950s-style music and decorations, the place is as casual as you can get and still have sit-down service, so most people order something greasy and chomp away. Rielle left Bob
two voice mails about her Reuben sandwich. To be precise, the issue was the Russian dressing, which she found lacking, and she wondered whether she should send her meal back to the kitchen. She did. Twice.

The impatient and self-indulgent attitude that led Rielle to make a double fuss over a Reuben sandwich would get worse as her due date grew closer. But as much as she appalled us, we also tried to empathize with her because she was alone, without emotional support from her baby’s father, and scared of everything, including giving birth. She also knew that a major effort was being made to control her and that my loyalties were with Cheri, the kids, and John Edwards, in that order.

After just four days in Aspen, we all packed our stuff and got back on the private jet to spend a week in San Diego. We landed there on December 27, crammed ourselves and our luggage into a rental car that was way too small, and drove to the Loews Coronado Bay hotel. After check-in, when another envelope full of cash was handed to me, we all got back in the car so we could hit an ice-cream shop for the kids and a drugstore so I could pick up a few necessities like toothbrushes and shaving supplies. While I was in the store and everyone waited outside, I spotted a new edition of the
Enquirer
on the news rack and was relieved to see we weren’t on the cover. I thumbed through a copy while at the register and still didn’t see anything about Rielle or the senator. When I brought the paper to the car, I said, “Hey, good news. We’re not in the
National Enquirer
.” Then I glanced down at the paper as it fell open to page six, where I saw a nice picture of Cheri next to a larger and very unflattering photo of Rielle with her mouth hanging open and her left hand extended, clawlike, making her look like a
Tyrannosaurus rex
in a maternity smock.

“Oh shit,” I said without thinking.

“What?” said Rielle and Cheri in unison.

Cheri took the paper out of my hand and got into the backseat of the car to look at it. As I drove, I could see she was studying it carefully. The article didn’t offer anything new about Edwards, Rielle, or the Young family but was instead a breathless report titled “Edwards Love-Child Bombshell
Causes Nationwide Frenzy.” (The last two words, “Nationwide Frenzy,” were printed in red ink.) Since no new facts were offered, the only real new tidbit was the picture of Cheri, which she didn’t like but I thought was fine. Rielle, as you might expect, was unhappy with her photo.

D
uring our week at Coronado Bay, we ran up a $10,000 tab as Rielle used every service the hotel had to offer while Cheri and I took the kids to Legoland, SeaWorld, and the San Diego Zoo. I authorized our biggest single room service purchase on December 29 when I realized as we were leaving the hotel for the zoo that it was Cheri’s birthday. (I got a little help when Cheri said, “You don’t even know what day it is today, do you?”)

After apologizing, and apologizing, I spent the time at the zoo walking a step and a half behind Cheri and performing child care like the world’s best dad. When I was able to get a private moment, I used my cell phone to call Rielle and ask her to help me out. She called the concierge, who went to the hotel gift shop and bought a bunch of odd presents. The concierge also got Cheri balloons, flowers, and a birthday cake, and the kitchen sent a small banquet to our room. It was a celebration, but nothing like the all-stops-out birthdays I had arranged for Cheri in the past. The proof was in the pictures, which show my wife and supposed mistress seated together at a well-appointed table, forcing smiles.

Cheri’s birthday was just one moment in what was becoming an unnervingly surreal misadventure. Unable to tell anyone where we were, and barred from speaking honestly with colleagues and friends, I began to feel as if I were watching the world turning from a spot on the moon. The Internet became even more important to me, and I followed news sites closely for some hint that the bargain I had struck with John Edwards was going to help him win Iowa and grab the momentum to propel him to the nomination. Everywhere I looked, I saw that he was gaining on the front-runner, Obama. This success came from a new campaign strategy that stressed taking a tough approach to the election battle with Republicans. Edwards told his audiences, “You try and nice them to death, they’ll trample you.”
This message worked with activist Democrats who had seen too many of their guys take the “high road” to defeat.

As Senator Edwards barnstormed across the state, the press took note of the fact that he was significantly tardy—an hour late wasn’t unusual—for every event. But no one knew that the delays were caused, in part, by the time he used on the phone listening to his angry wife, comforting his lonely mistress, and maintaining his relationship with me. In the ten years I had known him, John Edwards had never tried harder to strengthen our bond, by sharing information and expressing concern and gratitude. In one call, he said to me, laughing, “[Former president] Clinton’s been calling around trying to hire you. . . . He said he would still be president if he had you to cover for him.” On another call, he left a message noting he had just finished an interview on CNN with Larry King but wanted to make sure “you’re safe and in a place where you are good.”

By “place,” the senator meant state of mind, and I didn’t expect to be in a good place until we got our normal lives back. If he got the nomination and Mrs. Edwards survived, we would be hard-pressed to find a way out of our arrangement with Rielle before November. If he didn’t win the nomination but wanted to pursue either the vice presidential slot or a place in some future Democratic administration, we’d be in the same predicament. Barring a sudden surge of honesty, the only way we were going to get out of our commitment would be if Mrs. Edwards died. And we still loved her too much to hope for this terrible outcome.